Literacy and numeracy skills provide the essential base for building a competitive, highly skilled and productive workforce. The decision to build the sector’s capability to strengthen literacy and numeracy into the provision of education and training in other areas rests on understandings about how adults learn, considered alongside an analysis of the settings that provide optimum learning opportunities.

Embedding literacy and numeracy in provision such as vocational training is an effective and efficient way to provide direct, purposeful instruction in contexts (settings) that allow both the initial opportunity to acquire new literacy and numeracy knowledge and skills, and plenty of scope for practising them.

The section contains links to research projects and published collections in the Department of Labour, Ministry of Education and Ministry of Social Development.